Kind of? It's the only way that I know of for a laser to move a particle towards the laser's source. But it has some severe limitations: the force is extremely weak, on the order of 0.1 pN/(nm W); the particles have to refract, rather than absorb or scatter, the light; particles larger than 10 microns in diameter tend to be melted or vaporized since they can't dissipate the energy quickly enough.
I want to emphasize how incredibly weak these traps are. In order to apply a maximum force of 200 pN orthogonally to the path of the laser to a 1 micron polystyrene sphere requires approximately 1 W of laser power. Further, it takes about five times more laser power to apply the same amount of force axially (i.e., along the path of the beam) compared to transversely (i.e., in the plane orthogonal to the beam).
Depends who you ask... I saw David Grier (http://physics.nyu.edu/grierlab/) give a talk in which he said that this kind of optical tweezers doesn't really count as a a tractor beam. He went on to define the characteristics of a tractor beam and how he realized such a device in a laboratory setting.
He does use optical trapping forces, but is able to create exotic traps such as vortexes with the help of spatial light modulators. My understanding of the physics is not very good but here are some links to his papers (the second one has a cool visualization of a solenoidal tractor beam)
I want to emphasize how incredibly weak these traps are. In order to apply a maximum force of 200 pN orthogonally to the path of the laser to a 1 micron polystyrene sphere requires approximately 1 W of laser power. Further, it takes about five times more laser power to apply the same amount of force axially (i.e., along the path of the beam) compared to transversely (i.e., in the plane orthogonal to the beam).